Mark Peakman MBBS, BSc, MSc, PhD, FRCPath

Dr. Mark Peakman trained in medicine at University College Hospital and pursued postgraduate training in clinical immunology. After he received his PhD in immunology of type 1 diabetes, he held a senior clinical research fellowship at University of Pittsburgh. He subsequently returned to the UK and now oversees a research group at King's College London in the Department of Immunobiology. The main focus of the research is the cause of the autoimmune disease, type 1 diabetes (T1D). T1D is the third commonest autoimmune disease in the UK after thyroid autoimmunity and rheumatoid arthritis.

Through defining critical targets for the immune response in diabetes we have been able to examine how the immune system recognizes beta cells, and thus unravel disease mechanisms. More recently, we have used this knowledge to conduct the first clinical trial in T1D of a novel approach, called peptide immunotherapy. Going forward, a better understanding of the role of the immune response in T1D will promote the development of novel therapeutic strategies.